Monday with Mounce

The “etymological error” is defining a word by it morphemes, its little parts. There are times when context supports that a word still carries the meaning of its parts. εἰσέρχομαι (εἰς + πορεύομαι) means “to go into.” ἐξέρχομαι (ἐξ + ἔρχομαι) means “to go out.” But we can’t assume this is always the case. Context must support the etymological meaning. This is a common rule in exegesis, which is why the standard translation of our passage mystifies me.

Let’s have a little fun in the LXX. I have been especially interested lately in what it means to “wait on the Lord.” It seems to me that waiting is not passive; it is not going into neutral. It is a very active experience, often harder than “doing” something. It involves work and trust. Psalm 27:14 reads, ὑπόμεινον τὸν κύριον· ἀνδρίζου, καὶ κραταιούσθω ἡ καρδία σου, καὶ ὑπόμεινον τὸν κύριον.

The Jewish widows were being given preferential treatment over the Hellenistic widows, and the Apostles say, “It would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God (καταλείψαντας τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ) in order to wait on tables (διακονεῖν τραπέζαις.)” (NIV). I guess they are drawing “ministry” from the later διακονεῖν and from v 4 (“the ministry of the word,” τῇ διακονίᾳ τοῦ λόγου) even though there is no Greek word behind “ministry” in v 2.

One of the debates in translation work is whether there is meaning in the form of a sentence. If one word is an infinitive, for example, and the next is a participle, does it matter?

Those in the dynamic camp (NIV, NLT) tend towards answering, “No.” The question is how do I express the same meaning regardless of how I say it. So if the meaning of the Greek infinitive is best expressed with an English finite verb, so be it.

This is one of the basic points we try to make in first year Greek, but in the rush to simplify the language sufficiently for a first year student, sometimes the subtly of this point is missed. Just to be clear, I still believe the augment indicates past time. I haven’t gone over to the other camp on this point. And yet the aorist is so much more than “past time,” and in fact time is significantly secondary to the real gist of the tense. Students need to be reminded of this periodically.